Cardiovascular Health Metrics Reduce Total, Cardio Mortality

Meeting a greater number of the seven AHA recommendations linked to reduced risk of death

MONDAY, March 19 (HealthDay News) -- Meeting a greater number of the seven cardiovascular health metrics from the American Heart Association is associated with a lower risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, according to a study published online March 16 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

To investigate the association between cardiovascular health metrics and mortality, Quanhe Yang, Ph.D., from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues analyzed data from 44,959 U.S. adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1988 to 1994, 1999 to 2004, 2005 to 2010 and the NHANES III Linked Mortality File.

The investigators found that few participants met all seven health metrics. The age- and sex-standardized absolute risks per 1,000 person-years were 14.8 deaths for all-cause mortality, 6.5 for CVD mortality, and 3.7 for ischemic heart disease (IHD) mortality for participants who met one or fewer cardiovascular health metrics. The corresponding risks for those who met six or more metrics were 5.4 for all-cause mortality, 1.5 for CVD mortality, and 1.1 for IHD mortality (adjusted hazard ratios, 0.49 for all-cause mortality; 0.24 for CVD mortality; and 0.30 for IHD mortality). The adjusted population-attributable fractions for all-cause, CVD, and IHD mortality were 59, 64, and 63 percent, respectively.

"Our findings indicate that the presence of a greater number of cardiovascular health metrics was associated with a graded and significantly lower risk of total and CVD mortality," the authors write.